


Sanctified

by woakiees



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, poe is sad again but what's new
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:27:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22550968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woakiees/pseuds/woakiees
Summary: "Would she really have left him on his knees, pleading to a false God for some reason as to why he was left with a gaping hole between his ribcage where she had once made her home in his chest? If he had loved her harder, would she still have slipped through the cracks in his fingers?"
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Reader
Comments: 1
Kudos: 35





	Sanctified

The Resistance wasn’t a force designed to accommodate a sense of relaxation and ease. Not in the least. No, it was a caustic hurricane of motion, an evermoving thing. There was almost never a moment to breathe, and so, on the rare nights when the war was quiet and the atmosphere was still, most everyone jumped at the chance to take advantage of the calm, becoming lost in their reverie.

Poe Dameron was no exception.

The stars were particularly bright that night, shining radiantly overhead and providing just enough light to see through the darkness. Not that he really needed to see, he was perfectly content with just laying in the grass with his eyes closed, allowing the damp blades to kiss lines at the back of his neck. His chest moved slowly up and down with each inhale and exhale, the cold wind in the air freezing the tip of his nose, though he barely minded. The small bite was almost welcoming — the one thing that kept him grounded to reality, kept him somewhat lucid while his brain graveled for a state of nothingness. Poe was not a man who ever liked to give up complete focus.

He thought about allowing it though, just this once. It could be beneficial, perhaps. His thoughts were always racing, his mind always on, always thinking. He carried the weight of the galaxy on his shoulders day in and day out, always preparing for the worst, constantly formulating escape plans and alternatives to the original. Trying to keep everyone safe and out of harm’s way to the best of his ability.

Most importantly though, and over everything else, he would admit that he was just selfish enough to have _her_ safety at the forefront of his mind, above everyone else’s.

She was the reason behind it all. Or at least, she had been, back when she was still there with him. She had vanished into the night like a ghost, leaving him bitterly and utterly alone and waiting for something that he was beginning to believe would never come — her return, a reunion. The moment where he could sweep her up into his arms and trap her within them, hold her hostage to his love.

But of course, that was if she still even loved him. Did she? If she loved him, why would she have disappeared into the darkness like a cloud of gray smoke — untraceable and completely fluid? Would she really have left him on his knees, pleading to a false God for some reason as to why he was left with a gaping hole between his ribcage where she had once made her home in his chest? If he had loved her harder, would she still have slipped through the cracks in his fingers?

Perhaps it truly was his fault. Maybe he _hadn’t_ loved her enough. Maybe he hadn’t been as selfish as he had needed to be, and maybe he hadn’t really put her first, like he believed she irrevocably deserved.

But had it really been so bad that she felt the need to flee? Had he been so terrible of a lover, she could no longer stand to fight along his side for a cause she had once been so passionate and devoted to?

It had been close to a year now, and Poe still wasn’t sure what he had done wrong.

And he wasn’t the only one still grieving the loss of losing her. No, Leia spent each morning missing the idle conversation over a cup of caf with the girl she had come to love as her own, and the Resistance still hadn’t recovered having one of their best pilots ripped right out from under them.

He wondered if they would all feel better if they allowed themselves to be angry with her.

Instead, they all just just missed her.

That was definitely enough thinking for one night.

Poe allowed himself one more moment to lay there, willing what little was left of his heart to stop aching. He knew it was fruitless, though — it had been throbbing in the hollow expanse of his chest since the day she ran and took most of it with her. The pain had hardly even dulled since that morning all of those months ago when he woke with a wicked hangover only to find her side of the bed cold, his mother’s ring that she had been wearing around her neck now clasped back onto his.

How had he stayed dead asleep through that?

Maybe he would’ve been able to convince sheto stay if the alcohol swimming through his veins hadn’t subdued him.

Definitely enough thinking.

Poe quickly sat up, rubbing at his eyes with clenched fists, blinking to get them to focus again. He sat there for just a brief second, frowning at the sky that was now tinted orange. Had he fallen asleep? Was the sun now starting to rise?

Wait, was that _smoke_?

He turned, glancing over his shoulder with furrowed eyebrows. It took him a moment to comprehend exactly what he was looking at, maybe because rationalizing that his eyes were betraying him made more sense in that moment, but when he finally did, it felt as if all of the air had been knocked from his lungs, and the blood in his veins turned to ice.

In the short time that Poe had been lost in thought, the calm of the night had been replaced by a raging fire, completely consuming the small village the Resistance had been taking refuge in for the last week.

The horror was evident on his face, though there was no one else around to see it, and the ability to breathe completely escaped him as he gaped at the sight in front of him. He stood on shaky legs, pushing himself forward, running as fast as his body would allow towards the flames.

Ash filled his lungs as he grew closer, and he instinctively brought an arm up to protect his face. His eyes stung, but he couldn’t focus on that, no. Finding everyone else, making sure that the General was safe and figuring out what the _fuck_ was going on was much more important than his own discomfort.

Fallen bodies lined the dirt streets, some belonging to villagers Poe had come to know decently well, though most he didn’t recognize. He bent down next to one, checking for a pulse and instantly noticing the First Order symbol stitched onto the front of their jacket. He jumped back as if he had been burned, a small curse falling from his lips. They had known before taking refuge in the village that the majority of the planet was aligned with the First Order, but they had been so careful with keeping their presence hidden. What had given them away?

Another thing he didn’t have time to focus on.

 _Where was Leia_?

Poe quickly straightened, taking a moment to compose himself, to gain a sense of his surroundings. Everything was burning, nothing familiar, the sky orange as flames licked at every structure he set his gaze upon. He couldn’t tell which way was the center of town and which way the ships were parked. He decided to just take a chance on a direction, and ran towards the treeline to the west.

He tried his best to ignore the carnage around him, keeping his eyes set in front of him, refusing to let them wander. He was sure that he would never sleep again after this, not with the image of so many hollow corpses forever burned into his mind. He had seen some terrible things before, but he was almost sure that this proved to stand at the top of his list.

The surrounding buildings slowly started to become more familiar to him, as they weren’t completely charred yet. He recognized the hut he had been staying in himself, and knew that if he went up to the corner and took a sharp right, he would find himself standing in the large clearing with the ships and the supplies all ready to be packed away in the morning and —

Except, there weren’t any ships. No supplies. No people scrambling to make an escape, because it was apparent that they already had. The clearing was completely empty, the only sign that they had even been there at all showing in the tracks left in the grass.

They had left him.

He was alone.

Alone on his knees in the middle of a burning village without his X-Wing or another ship of his own, with no way to find Leia and the others. He didn’t even know where his droid was. He was alone and he was going to die alone and maybe that was for the better because he hadn’t been there to help evacuate and he hadn’t been able to save the villagers who had been so kind as to offer them refuge. Maybe he deserved to die in the middle of the fire and the wreckage he hadn’t been able to even try and stop because he was too busy wallowing in his own thoughts and self pity.

If he hadn’t been doing the same just then, he would’ve noticed someone sneaking up behind him before they wrapped their hand around his wrist.

He spun on his heel, his hand reaching for the blaster on his hip on instinct, his thoughts quieting as he immediately went into attack mode.

But he couldn’t even stay there for very long before his defense was replaced by shock, and maybe just another dash of horror, though his brain wasn’t exactly able to place why.

Maybe because his brain assumed that he would be dead before he even got the see who it was that grabbed him.

Maybe it was because it was _her_ standing before him, her hair whipping around her face with the wind, her eyes still her’s, only colder.

Maybe it was because she was standing there in all black, and Poe wasn’t foolish enough to think that it was just a coincidence.

Every bone in his body was telling him to move away from her, to put as much distance as he could between them, but no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t get his feet to move. Part of him didn’t _want_ to move. She was standing in front of him and while the destruction illuminating her silhouette might have been at her own hand, it was still _her_ , and she was _right there_. Right in front of him. Touching him after so long.

But the warmth of her hand around his wrist soon disappeared, and her posture went borderline rigid. Her eyes traveled over his body, and if Poe didn’t know any better, he would almost say that it seemed as if she were checking him for any sort of injury or wound.

But she wouldn’t care about that, would she? Not after what she had just done, and what she was still getting ready to do. Poe could see her finger hovering over the trigger of her blaster.

“That’s why you left?” he started through clenched teeth, the anger he had kept pushed down for so long beginning to bubble in his veins. “To join _them_?”

She didn’t respond, only kept her gaze focused on a spot somewhere behind his shoulder as she couldn’t bring herself to actually look at him again.

He wasn’t having that.

Not if he was going to die by her hand at any moment.

His hand flew to her chin, grasping it between two fingers as he forced her to look him in the eye. The lack of emotion he saw within her own almost made him falter, but he was determined to get something out of her — the answer to the question he had been asking himself since the morning she disappeared right out from under him.

“Tell me why.”

“I didn’t do this by choice,” was her immediate response, and the sound of her voice in his ears made Poe want to weep. It was still her, but harsher — void of the softness that had once lingered in every inch of her being.

“What, didn’t have a choice in joining the First Order or didn’t have a choice in killing dozens of innocent people?”

She looked almost as horrified as he had upon seeing her again, her gaze flickering back to the treeline behind him before he shook her head just a little too roughly in order to bring her attention back to him.

“I didn’t do this,” she answered quietly, shaking her head free of his grasp. “I came to warn you.”

She took a single step backwards, and Poe saw an opportunity to rip the blaster from her hand, spinning her around until her back collided with his chest, the muzzle of her blaster now pressed firmly to her temple. He had no plans on pulling the trigger, he would let her walk away before he ever thought of such a thing, but she didn’t need to know that just then.

“Like hell you didn’t do this,” he growled, both of them now facing the village as it continued to burn in front of their eyes. “ _Traitor_.”

She didn’t fight against him like he half expected her to. “I may have killed tonight but believe me when I say the lives I took were not at all innocent.”

Poe’s grip on the blaster loosened just a fraction, and he shifted somewhat nervously, mind instantly wandering back to the man with the First Order patch on his coat he had seen upon entering the village just a few minutes before.

“I told you,” she grumbled, effectively twisting herself out of his grasp, though she let him keep the blaster in his hand. “I came to warn yo—”

“Where are Leia and the others?” he asked suddenly, effectively cutting her off and completely disregarding the words attempting to leave her lips for a second time.

He watched her closely, his expression hard though the pain in his eyes couldn’t be hidden no matter how hard he tried. She noticed, of course she did, but she wasn’t there to mend the past. Not then.

“I didn’t ask,” she answered with a simple shrug of her shoulders.

“They wouldn’t have left me here, they wouldn’t—”

“Leia knew that I wasn’t going to let anything happen to you.”

There was something in her tone that made Poe want to throw all of his apprehension and hesitation out the window. Either she had gotten really good at lying in her time with the dark side, perfecting her manipulation and persuasion skills, or she was being honest. Poe wasn’t sure which he prefered.

“She trusted you enough to help me, but not enough to tell you where they’re headed? What are you, a spy?”

“That would make this a whole hell of a lot less complicated,” she mumbled with a quick shake of her head. She took a brief pause, sighing gently as she folded her arms almost protectively across her chest. “I didn’t want her to tell me. But I _am_ tracking BeeBee from my TIE. He’s safe along with the rest of them.”

He nearly winced at the sting that came with her affectionately referring to his droid, but he pushed it away, clenching his fists and digging his nails into the palms of his hands.

“Except the First Order can track your TIE, which means they can track him—”

“I disabled that before I even left the bay,” she grumbled, waving her hand as if to dismiss him. “I’m not stupid, Dameron.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” he retorted, glancing at her attire once again with a scowl on his face, though it quickly softened as he slowly began to give in to a single ounce of his emotions. “What happened to you?”

“You need to go.”

“I want you to tell me—”

“I told you I didn’t do this by choice, and that’s all you need to know. Now you need to _go_.”

“Give me one _damn good_ reason as to why I should trust you.”

Poe watched as her expression softened, just a fraction, her stealy facade cracking just enough for him to see a small shadow of someone familiar, a ghost of the girl he once knew.

“Because you did, once.”

“But that’s where you’re wrong,” he laughed bitterly, waving the blaster around in his hand like it wasn’t some dangerous weapon designed to kill. “I trusted the girl who fought for the light. The girl I loved. That version of you is dead.”

“You know just as well as I do that we all kill different parts of ourselves in order to survive. Haven’t you?”

He ignored answering her question completely, though he couldn’t ignore the pang in his chest that came with her words.

“And we both know that you never trust a survivor until you know what they did to stay alive.”

She stayed silent at that, tearing her gaze away from him. She seemed to lose herself in thought for just a moment, but quickly shook herself out of it, the small sliver of light Poe thought he saw shining in her irises quickly fading.

“Kylo Ren is going to hear about what happened in this village soon,” she whispered, voice softer than her facial expression. “If you stay here, you’re dead.”

Poe ground his teeth together, jaw clenched as he forced himself to keep his eyes on her. He tried to think of some response, but couldn’t. Even just the thought of Ren made his veins itch with panic.

But she was speaking again before he had a chance to spiral.

“My TIE is just through the treeline over there,” she said, nodding to her right, the opposite of where she had been looking earlier. “You can waste time checking it over to make sure I’m telling the truth and that it’s completely undetectable, or you can just trust _me_.”

There was a weird emphasis that she placed on “me”, one that Poe detected but didn’t want to think about.

“And what about you?” he asked suddenly, silently cursing himself for caring. He wasn’t supposed to care, not about her. “You’re just going to stay here?”

She shrugged her shoulders, as if the answer didn’t matter, slowly bringing her eyes back to his. “Like I said, Ren’s bound to show up eventually. And he’s also going to get a punch in the balls when he realizes that his best pilot is missing during it all.”

Her sentence made a soft smile twitch at his lips, and he had to suppress the urge to ask her more. There were so many things that he wanted to know, still so many unanswered questions. So many things he needed her to elaborate on. So many things that he needed to say.

“Come with me,” he almost pleaded, hating the desperate edge in his voice. He sounded weak, and thanked the Gods above that she didn’t seem to think the same.

“I can’t.”

She didn’t offer up any sort of explanation, or a reason as to why she couldn’t, and Poe wanted to ask her. He wanted an answer more than he wanted anything in that moment, but she had always been easy to read, and he could tell that she wouldn’t give herself up just then.

He sighed gently, taking a single step towards her. All of his previous thoughts about her seemed to vanish just then, and he knew that it wasn’t possible for her to have set fire to a village full of innocents, or for her to be the monster he had first seen in his head. There was more to it, and he was dying to know.

But he knew that he didn’t have the time, and he knew that she wouldn’t budge on the matter.

He had always put her safety first, but she had always done the same with him. They were both stubborn, and Poe had to will himself to be selfish just this once.

It would do no good if they were both trapped in the remnants of this village.

“If I find the others, if I make it back to the Resistance,” he mumbled gently, taking a brief pause. “I’ll come back for you.”

She chuckled at his words, though the sound held no humor. She looked haunted, almost, and Poe desperately wondered why.

“They’ll find me first, Dameron.”

Her voice was full of disappointment, and Poe wanted to extend his offer to her again, insist that she go with him, but the words were trapped in his throat and before he had a chance to free them she was speaking again.

“Now get out of here before I have to make you.”

Something in him wouldn’t allow him to hesitate — maybe it was the tone in her voice or the way that she looked at him, but he decided to oblige. He held her blaster back out to her with shaking hands, and for a moment, she looked as if she didn’t want to take it from him. Her pause was just long enough that Poe reached out for her hand, dropping the weapon into it and curling her fingers around the handle. He squeezed her hand once before pulling back, almost reluctantly so.

“Go.”

Poe stared at her for a second longer before listening to her words. He took several steps backwards, fully giving into his desire to believe that none of this was her fault. Absolutely none of it. He knew she wasn’t capable of something so horrid, though there were still so many unanswered questions.

“I’ll come back for you,” he said again, voice more sure than it had been before — a promise lingering in his tone that he vowed to not break.

“Go, Dameron.”

Her tone left no room to argue, and with that, he turned, racing off towards the TIE hidden between the trees, only glancing behind him once. He knew that if he looked at her any more than that, he would cave and turn back to her.

She watched him fade into the night, becoming nothing more than a shadow in the lingering darkness. She watched and watched and watched until she saw her small ship leave the atmosphere, becoming nothing more than another star in the night sky until it disappeared completely. The sight brought a small bout of relief, but fear soon started to creep its way back into her veins.

They hadn’t been alone.

She knew they would find her first, because they already had.

She could feel the eyes still boring into her skin from amongst the treeline. Eyes that had been there since the start of her exchange with Poe. Eyes belonging to someone she had fully expected to take a shot at him, though that shot never came, and while she wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, she knew it wasn’t good.

But he was safe. That was all that mattered to her in that moment.

He was safe, and while she certainly wasn’t, the thought still brought her a sense of comfort.


End file.
